"This is a tough business we're in," Commander Brian Corey, 39, told reporters aboard this US Navy aircraft carrier in the Gulf.

The US Central Command in Qatar has said a Patriot may have caused the loss of the F-18C Hornet fighter-bomber, which was based on the USS Kitty Hawk.

"I'm absolutely certain that those guys did everything they could and they believed they were doing the right thing," Corey said.

He emphasized the incident is under investigation and they still don't know if a Patriot caused the plane to go down over central Iraq during a bombing mission late Wednesday, or whether it was Iraqi fire.

"So no, we're not angry," said Corey, deputy commander of Strike Fighter Squadron 192 which calls itself the World Famous Golden Dragons.

Senior officers aboard the carrier said a search and rescue mission continued Friday for the veteran pilot whose name and squadron have not been released.

Corey, of Illinois, said the war in Iraq is going exceptionally well with extremely low casualties.

"But that doesn't mean it's easy and that doesn't mean people can't make mistakes. We knew from the beginning that there would be things that come up. We knew people would make mistakes," the Hornet pilot said.

He said one of a pilot's biggest fears is that he will bomb friendly troops in error. They spend an enormous amount of time during pre-flight briefings and in-flight communication working to prevent that, he said.

In one pilot briefing room visited by AFP, a board on the wall carried a warning: "NO blue on blue," it said, meaning no friendly fire.

"We're doing our best and I'm sure those guys on the ground are doing their best," Corey said.

A US Patriot missile was blamed for shooting down a British Tornado warplane with the loss of two airmen at the start of the now two-week-old war against Iraq.

"We study everything that could come up, whether that's friendly or enemy fire, so we do what we can to make sure that we don't cause a problem for the guys on the ground and that they don't cause a problem for us," Corey said.

The missing pilot is the first from this air wing to be lost in combat since perhaps Vietnam and his disappearance has shaken the ship's four fighter-bomber squadrons.

"We live together, we eat together, we fly together, work together," Corey said. "We're a very close-knit group and so of course we're talking about it and we just hope and pray for the best."

The Pentagon has included the pilot in the latest overall US death toll for the war.

But thoughts of their missing colleague on the Kitty Hawk end temporarily as pilots sit in the cockpit for another mission. There is just too much to deal with, he said.

"We have to do things correctly or we're not gonna come back. So we put all that aside when we suit up, and we go out and do the mission that we're assigned to do," Corey said.

Fighter bombers from this carrier early Friday continued bombing missions that began more than 12 hours earlier in and around Baghdad's airport, a spokesman said.

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